Hey all,

 

As I described in another thread, my next computer will be a laptop, out of necessity. Because the intrnal drive won't be that big, I'd like to run FSX completely of an external HD, but I'm not sure about the connections and sort of drive to use. I estimate that all of FSX will take up between 100 and 200GB, so I was thinking perhaps of a 256GB SSD with USB3.0 connections. Now my question: Does this give sufficient data transfer speeds to make FSX load somewhat fast, or will it be just the same/slower than putting it on an internal 7200RPM drive? Are there any external configurations you would recommend?

Thraini

I've run FSX on an external drive witha USB 2.0 connection and it was a little slow in loading that's all - I then overcame that by using a software hack/app called RAMDRIVE.

I've also used eSATA 3GB/sec - no issues so USB 3.0 should be OK unless you get could get an eSATA/mSATA 6 GB/sec connection.

Regards

pH

Thanks for the info, a USB 3 connection in combination with a non-SSD should suffice, then.

 

What about partitioning the FSX drive? If I get a big, 3TB drive, I'm not gonna use it solely for FSX. Is portioning it an option, or will that somehow degrade FSX performance?

Thralni

Obviously a SSD might be better than a conventional HDD wrt loading times etc, but good fast conventional HDD should work especially one of the newer WD or Seagate, etc drives.  (For another sim I used a very expensive 64GB USB 3.0 thumb drive and that worked OK).

 

One trick I used to use pre SSDprice drops was to use a large 1TB or more and partition it to say 300GB use it solely for FSX (leaving the other 700GB empty) and that way it became a much faster drive than if I hadn't partitioned it. (it allows only access to the faster parts of the drive).  Even if you have multiple partitions make sure that FSX goes on the first partition that you create as that will be the fastest access for FSX.  Just a thought.

pH